Blotting Paper: A life of sex and drugs

[bloggert]

Excellent writing with near perfect grammar and spelling. Good job. It reads like a thriller, and frankly, if you put a bit into it, you could turn this into a very interesting book except for the fact that the subject matter involves the smuggle of illicit substances.

I also appreciate that this story offers a rare insight into a side of life that most of us may not have been aware of. The details are credible and well constructed. Keep it up!

[takashi31400]

Bro TS,

Thanks for sharing ,really intresting story.Camping for more.

[Lindblum]

Originally Posted by bloggert

Excellent writing with near perfect grammar and spelling. Good job. It reads like a thriller, and frankly, if you put a bit into it, you could turn this into a very interesting book except for the fact that the subject matter involves the smuggle of illicit substances.

I also appreciate that this story offers a rare insight into a side of life that most of us may not have been aware of. The details are credible and well constructed. Keep it up!

Thanks dude, and all the rest who have been following this story. It is my intention to eventually turn this in for publishing. I have been editing and doing major overhaul on my Word Doc for the past four chapters to include better descriptions and flair.

This is my pilot draft and I'm glad to receive such overwhelming response. I will add the raws in forums and edit it for better coherence and flow. So, if you do check the same thread a few days later, it isn't surprising to see added paragraphs, or new content, or simply major changes to the characters and their lives.

One point I would like all bros to note, as I have done government service before, I already know their response to such a story even though it is fiction. My book will 99.999% be banned for publication in Singapore because the protagonist is the villain, and it involves a good deal of our police being pushed to the edge, and it involves drugs. They will give the same response as they did to the Cannabis Awareness of Singapore website, that it "does not further our social objectives" or somewhere along those lines. We are a hypocritical people. We allow shows like Breaking Bad or Cannabis Kid as long as it doesn't involve Singapore, and Singaporeans. But when a similar story comes along that is based in Singapore, the government has a ton of things to say even though it is a piece of fiction.

Why I'm saying this, is because I intend to turn this in for publishing overseas to be marketed to an international audience. Hence, you may see rhetoric and obvious explanations about the systems, housing, transport in Singapore. I have to replace words like Flats with Apartments, or Apartment Blocks instead of HDB. You will not find Singlish, and you will not find local jargon in it. I thank you all for your understanding. I love Singapore, but since it is going to be banned anyway despite my effort in writing it, I might as well market it to a global audience.

This may be a piece of fiction, but i'm of the belief that a good story has to have a degree of realism. We have sat too long reading and watching standard stories of consequence where the villain is inherently evil and the plot devices placed so unintelligently just for the protagonist to forward the plot i.e., the Police suddenly solved the case because the criminal acted so suspiciously and it was captured on camera. We are an intelligent people, and this story was written in a way that would relate to how ordinary people can do extraordinary and disastrous things.

This isn't a story about Consequence, where you do X and it affects Tom, Dick, Harry, Peter, and Jane. You will not see mothers and fathers crying like in Crimewatch or mediacorp dramas. You will not see a mother working 6 jobs as a cleaner to support a character who turns out to be a bad guy. You will not see drug addicts in dark street corners with a scary looking syringe and a spoon. Anything standard you can think of from Mediacorp and their formulated dramas, I will make the extra effort to avoid it. This is a story about Choices. Whoever you choose to be, good or bad, you have to live with it. If you have to pay a price for it, it will happen. I like to treat the audience with a degree of respect. I leave it to you to decide who is Right and who is Wrong.

One of the main reasons why fellow Bros and my friends like this story so much is because of the realism involved. I thank some of you who PMed me about whether it was true. Lets put it this way, this story is written in an alternative version of myself. I am placing myself in a hypothetical situation where if I were to become a drug dealer, what would I have done? If the government doesnt like what I'm saying and says I'm teaching people how to peddle drugs, then read the story and think about closing the loopholes in our society and system. Do not expect people to keep saying stuff you like hearing. Of course, plot devices have to be placed strategically along the way for the characters to pick up on. New characters have to be created, and old characters have to be taken out. It is after all, a fucking good story that I'm dedicated on writing.

DISCLAIMER: I declare before the OSA that government protocol will not be revealed. This is a story that Ive been wanting to write for a very long time.


Stay Tuned

[prettymannequin]

Looking forward.

[Spikerman]

Staying Tuned ....

[eeemen]

Looking forward to your excellent narration! Thx. Cheers, ....................

[ojit82]

Superb story... well done ts!!

[youngboy123]

Always wanted to write a story like that, so detailed that I can imagine myself as the main character. Good write-up bro! Awaiting your next update.

[Lindblum]

- Continued Chapter 4

Newton's Laws

One fascinating thing about winter was that there would never be a lack of surprises at the brutal, and unpredictable sudden plunges in temperature. The temperature would plunge below freezing for a day or two, accompanied with spine chilling winds, and end with the occasional flurries keeping almost everyone holed up at home. It wasn’t uncommon to open your door today and see a puddle of water in a pothole, only to find it becoming a frozen slip hazard the next morning.

The weather took a turn for the worse. For the past few days, SEAMLESS became my best friend. SEAMLESS was an online food ordering and delivery one-stop portal, which a customer could access, choose it’s participating restaurants, and have food delivered to your doorstep. Its convenience was simply impeccable. What more could a hungry man ask for from an app or a website, to have food delivered right to your doorstep in a matter of 45 to 60 minutes. I could take a dump, watch my favorite sitcom on TV, and do some reading while waiting for the knock on the door. Before I came over to the United States, I had never heard of such a one-stop portal. The online food ordering and delivery one-stop portal never really gained traction in Singapore. Maybe the people didn’t trust technology enough to make online payments, or maybe Singapore lacked entrepreneurship, I do not know. If there were a way to describe Singapore, it would be an incredibly polarized society. On one hand, you have the people familiar with technology, and on the other hand, you have the folks who scoff at technology as nothing more than entertainment.

But SEAMLESS wasn’t the only thing I ordered from the Internet. I did my groceries through an assortment of websites like AMAZON, PEAPOD, and SOAPBAR. Everything was digital and done through my MacBook Pro. I wasn’t the only one doing that; almost everyone in my social circle used online shopping for food, groceries, or both. As the weather got colder, and the schoolwork got harder, I completely lost the drive to make a trip down to the grocer. To me, the Internet couldn’t just be defined in terms of convenience; it was a matter of endless possibilities. I had to use it for my LSD endeavor.

It was a Tuesday and close to a week away from Christmas. The time was about 5pm and I just came back from the university fitness center feeling proud after doing a full set of strength training and aerobic exercises. After I came out from my shower, there was a knock on the door.

“Mr L., your 18-inch chicken pesto pizza, garlic knots, and 20 wings, seasoned and garlic pepper. Please sign here,” as the deliveryman handed me the invoice. He was short, had Hispanic looking features, and didn’t look like he wanted anything more than for me to sign the invoice and leave. Apparently, it had already been paid for, and it was clearly addressed to me.

I know I wasn’t thinking straight, but that episode with Violet clearly left me looking at things from a different light. Let me remind you, I wasn’t shaken, but I had a completely new perspective on how something innocent could turn out to be something else. Was this some kind of scam, a trick, or was I supposed to find something hidden inside like a note or another SIM card? I kept a straight face, but my mind was just swirling in a soup of questions, and possibilities.

“Is there some kind of mistake? I didn’t make such an order.”

“I don’t know man, I just deliver. Call the restaurant if you want; I gotta rush to another place now.” And with that he just shut the door behind him. I didn’t even have a chance to tip him.

“New Yorker..”

That was my way of describing the typical New Yorker: Blunt, and simply no time for bullshit. In many ways, New York was just like Singapore; people were always in a hurry, scuttling like ants, and going about their business. If you weren’t in a hurry, you were jobless, homeless, or fabulously rich. Everyone had something to do, and nobody would notice you unless you made your point in an assertive, and attention grabbing manner.

Not long after I placed the pizza, garlic knots, and wings on the table, there was another knock on the door. It was the Kyung brothers; Coby, and Phillip.

“Surprise! Phillip said it was our treat this time round, and there was a 10% discount on SEAMLESS, so fuck yea, we’re having pizzas tonight. Is it here yet?” Phillip was behind him with two 6-packs of beer; ASAHI, and PERONI, both our favorite lagers, except one’s Japanese and the other’s Italian.

“Dude, you should have called. What if I was going out?”

“You told Phillip you were hitting the gym, so I said we gotta catch you with the delivery before you left your place.”

Once they got settled in and placed their coats on my couch, we each raised a bottle of beer and chugged it within a minute. It was customary of us to chug the first bottle of beer to kick-start the night before doing anything; it gets the juices flowing. For the next 20 minutes, we made small talk about the weather, Coby’s National Guard enlistment, and things we found interesting recently. Yes, Coby was enlisting in the National Guard; he probably figured he’d make a better soldier than a chemist.

Coby was somebody who could fit in any social circle because of the way he talked and came across. When I first met Coby in General Chemistry lab, his first words to me were “Yo, Wassup.” It made me completely uncomfortable with him as a lab partner, but at that instant, I knew he was a laid back, easygoing person, and that we could be friends. He wasn’t too assertive, and he had that level of meticulousness about him that I found similar to mine, even though he always came to lab unprepared.

Phillip on the other hand was different from Coby. Phillip was 3 years older than Coby, but still a little younger than me. I was 25, and in undergraduate terms, I was pretty much an old fuck. They may share the same genes, but clearly, Phillip was a lot more paranoid than Coby, and lacked the street smarts that Coby had. Phillip had to be introduced by Coby before anyone would even talk to him at parties, and events. He was the kind of guy who could come and go in your life, and you wouldn’t even remember he existed. Maybe that was why he chose computer science as his undergraduate major and graduate studies, where he could completely immerse himself in another world.

What Phillip lacked in street smarts, and social skills, he made it up with intelligence and paranoia, to the extent it got pure irritating. The first time Phillip bought Weed, he was so paranoid about it going bad, that he bought a box of mason jars, a food saver vacuum pump, oxygen absorbers, and moisture absorbers; all these just to preserve a couple of buds and prevent it from further degradation. Honestly, if my Weed had gone bad, I would have just made another phone call to buy more instead. Whatever it was, Phillip’s paranoia made him incredibly detailed, and sequential, a trait I needed in a partner.

“We’re in. We need to know more about your little plan.”

“We? You mean both you and Coby?”

“What. You didn’t think I’ll do this without my brother, did you. It’s always better to have two brains and someone you can trust,“ chugging down what was left in his bottle of ASAHI.

Everything that I had thought out, and played out in my head over and over again for the past few weeks till that day, I told it to Coby and Phillip. It was incredibly detailed, from how I would smuggle the LSD back, to the actual operations assuming Phillip was helping me, to how we would communicate, down to the most rudimentary examples of counter surveillance. Everything I thought of was based on the assumption that the DEA, CNB, CID, and Interpol were tracking us. It pays to be careful. Channel 1 from the deep web on TOR Onion will be used to take orders and sent directly to Phillip. Phillip will then communicate to me the orders and our normal exchanges on Channel 2; either an Email or a phone app service, which had to be encrypted. Channel 3 will be our money and paper trial to each other.

The look on both the Kyung brothers’ eyes was that of a man deep in thought. There was a moment of silence, during which I got up to get another beer from the refrigerator.

[Lindblum]

- Cont

“That’s not good enough. We have to close our Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and MySpace accounts. Using Gmail to send emails to each other? Bad bad bad idea. Never use services of big companies, L. The government pays them to reveal stuff. We're gonna be so screwed.”

Phillip was right; I should have realized this. Governments have power, and the police had access to resources that we didn't. The more he explained, I was convinced I found the right guy. Any government who allowed social media into their country can request for your information, right up to your friends, photos, and profile. I have heard of the police using Facebook and blogs to solve cases. Our entire network of friends, family, and places we frequently visit could be tracked if the police had us on their radar. All those places we check-in with our friends, and families on Yelp, or Facebook, can be used by the police as places to look for you, view their cameras, and identify all the people you were with. Social media had to go. And it totally made sense; big companies like Microsoft, Google, Yahoo etc have huge databases of people. Any government in the right frame of mind will look to them and ask for details. To remain in the shadows, we must adopt a life of anonymity.

“Then how do we communicate?”

“Channel 2 will have to be Anonymous Email Services from people who are paranoid about being tracked. There are such people and services around; courtesy of the free world. Only access it at one time of the day. I will give you a window period of when to look at your Email to take shipping orders from me, and in that window period, you must get down all that information.”

“I’m down with your plan. But why only a window period, at a specific time?”

Phillip smiled, sat back with a pizza slice in hand. It was the smug of confidence and the look of self-admiration at the epiphany of his own genius. Whether it was a deliberate pause, both Coby and I were waiting with eagerness at the genius he had in store.

“So I know it’s you. I will set it up in such a way that I can track people accessing it, and if accessed at any other time, I know you are being tracked by the police.”

Working on the assumption the Police was tracking us was the right move. But we needed more layers of security. I had thought of the idea of encrypting our messages. Since I had to receive the shipping orders from Phillip through Channel 2, it would be wise to work on encrypting our texts and Emails, so the Police won’t have evidence of us taking orders for drug smuggling. Even if the Police were to find Channel 2 through their sophisticated IT departments, they would need evidence to incriminate us as drug dealers. Yes, we needed an extra layer of security, and the only person who knew how to encrypt messages would be Phillip. I trusted his computer and IT skills.

“It’s possible. But it’s a lot more work than our original plan, not to mention it’s not worth it.”

"We need encryption, Phillip. It's logical, not to mention, a rudimentary requirement for intelligent beings like us."

"Oh, we'll get it, but why not listen to my plan first?"

Phillip put both his hands on the table, crossing his left palm over his right, tilted his head and in a very serious tone, he looked at us and said, "We buy encryption software online," ending his sentence with a tap on the table with his index finger. Then he stopped there.

It felt like a cold wind just blew across the room and the whole world just died. Everything fell silent, with Coby and I left in animated suspense; eyes wide open, and a gapping mouth. The man who we had thought was a genius 10 minutes ago, suddenly made us feel he was from Mars, or the weirdo from Ancient Aliens.

Coby turned to face Phillip in total disbelief.

"That.. is like the dumbest freaking shit I've ever heard in my entire life. I can't believe we live together."

"What the fuck…"

As Coby and Phillip quarreled about who said the dumbest thing in their 20 over years of living together, I was just speechless, reeling in from the shock and outrageous suggestion Phillip just gave. I certainly hope he was just joking. Was he kidding us? The Police IT departments were going to bust the code in less than a day, and read all our texts, emails, effectively hammering the last nail in our coffin. We were going to get busted, Coby and Phillip were going to jail, and I was going to be hanged.

"Wait! I'm not done yet, geez. This is my plan ok, I know what I'm saying. Listen first! Fuck both of you; have more faith in me ok, you fucktards."

"We're waiting; go on. And I'm just waiting to dick slap your face if you say something stupid again brother."

"L, you wanted a double layered security in Channel 2. Well good news for you; I have a triple layered security. We use medieval communication techniques, encrypted in technology. That will send their tech departments crazy, I tell you. If I wrote the damn encryption, I would have to change it all the time, test, probe, then change it again. They have hundreds of tech experts cracking the codes, and I'm just one man; its just plain stupid to use my encryption."

Phillip paused, took a deep breath then continued.

"We get the same book, something rare, a book that not many people read. Use cartesian coordinates x,y,z in numbers that identify which page, row, and numbering for the word we refer to, then encrypt it using different online softwares. It will send the police tech departments crazy! They will have no freaking clue what we are talking about even if they crack the encryption code because all they see are numbers like 10,25,4 - 200,23,6 - 98,20,13. They need to find our book first; there are billions of books in this world, if they don't find our book, they can't crack our code. That, fucktards, is real intelligence!"



-To be continued

[Lindblum]

Latest Post has been added for a lot of content.

[Sen5eS]

Originally Posted by Lindblum

Latest Post has been added for a lot of content.

Cipher and Code method ... archaic but effective?

[Lindblum]

Originally Posted by Sen5eS

Cipher and Code method ... archaic but effective?

Thanks for bringing it up . It's not foolproof but for the characters it's the best shot at avoiding sophisticated IT teams . It'll hardly be much of a realistic story if Phillip became a genius at encryption and coding ; that would be more of a plot device already . Do read on, and thanks for reading !

[Superjam]

That fucktards is real intelligence.
And that dick slap threat

Man these brothers are good HAHAHAHAHA
I'm a fan of the brothers now

[Lindblum]

Originally Posted by Superjam

That fucktards is real intelligence.
And that dick slap threat

Man these brothers are good HAHAHAHAHA
I'm a fan of the brothers now

thanks! i love the brothers too !